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Ernest Bai Koroma
• Sierra Leone's president, Ernest Bai Koroma, recently sworn in for a second term.

Ernest Bai Koroma re-elected as the President of Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone, the incumbent President Ernest Bai Koroma, leader of the All People's Congress was re-elected as the President of the nation on 23 November 2012 after the electoral body declared results of the elections that took place in the country in third week of November. He had sworn in as the President of Sierra Leone on the same day, when the results were declared. He won the Presidential elections by securing 58.7 percent votes in his favour.

Julius Maada Bio, the top rival of Koroma won 37.4 percent votes. The incumbent President managed to save himself from the second round of voting by securing more than 55 percent votes in his support. To support the growth of the country and make it one of the fastest growing economies of the world, the President of the war-scarred nation asked all the opposition parties that included Sierra Leone People’s Party’s (SLPP) to unite with each other and work for the cause of overall development of the nation.

Christiana Thorpe, the Chief of the National Elections Commission on 23 November 2012 declared that any citizen of the nation can challenge the validity of the Presidential Elections by filing a petition in the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone within seven days of result declaration.

Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone is a mineral resource rich West African Nation, with massive iron ore deposits. The estimates of International Monetary Fund had predicted that use of the mineral resources available in the nation would increase the 2.2-billion dollar Gross Domestic Product by 21 percent.

AMRITA PATEL------NATIONAL DAIRY DEVELOPMENT BOARD
ANU AGA----THERMAX LIMITED
MALLIKA SRINIVASAN----TRACTORS AND FARM EQUIPMENT
PRIYA PAUL---PARK HOTELS






CHINNA PILLAI-----STREE RATNA AWARD
KAVERI THAKUR------FASTEST SWIMMER IN ASIA
MIRA NAIR----FILM MAKER GOT GOLDEN LION AWARD IN VENICE FILM FEST
YASODA EKAMBARAM---NIRJA BHANOT AWARD

Aung San Suu Kyi -----

The Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi received, the US Congress highest Civilian Honour at a ceremony organized in the Capitol Rotunda on 19 September 2012, before her meet with the US president Barack Obama. Before her, the recipient of this award includes George Washington, Pope John Paul II and Dalai Lama-the Tibetan Buddhist Leader. During her 15 year long house arrest against the military rule in Myanmar, she received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2008.

Other awards received by Suu Kyi before the US Congress highest Civilian medal are:

1. Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in the year 1990
2. Rafto Prize in the year 1990
3. Nobel Peace Prize in the year 1991
4. The government of India awarded her with Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in the year 1992
5. The government of Venezuela awarded her with International Simón Bolívar Prize
6. The Government of Canada in 2007 awarded her with Honorary citizenship, she was among the only four people by then to receive the award
7. She won Wallenberg Medal in 2011

Sunita Williams

Sunita Williams, the astronaut of Indian American origin, took over the command of International Space Station on 15 September 2012. As per the reports released by NASA, in the traditional ceremony of change-of-command, Expedition 33 Sunita Williams took over the command from Expedition 32 Commander Gennady Padalka in the Destiny Laboratory.

Before this on 6 September 2012, Sunita Williams booked a record for total cumulative spacewalk time of 44 hours and 2 minutes by a woman astronaut with her sixth walk in the space for repairing a faulty unit of power distribution.  In the spacewalk of 6 hours and 28 minutes, she used a wire brush made using a spare cable and a toothbrush for repairing the unit.

Sunita Williams is accompanied with Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and Russia’s Yury Malenchenko on the International Space Station.